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Shou didn't know how to exist with a schedule. Half a week had gone by of him forgetting what time school started, forgetting what the bell meant, forgetting which class he was meant to exist in, forgetting how he's supposed to listen and write and watch and learn. Forgetting forgetting forgetting.
In hindsight, he didn't know what to expect.
Maybe something else entirely? He knew of school and life from shitty late night TV shows, those American series he used to watch in hotel rooms or empty apartments when his father forgot about him until the sun rose. At some point he'd thought all those shows were real, not acted out and scripted.
Ritsu is his baseline for normalcy, now. Or maybe he's what Shou wishes normal was, how Ritsu is all sharp edges and cold blue and narrowed eyes and that electric cold shock of his aura whenever Shou touches him.
(He'd asked Ritsu if he felt that shock too, once. Blurted it out as Shou curled up in Ritsu's blankets and Ritsu pretended to do his homework.
"You feel that. Like, brrrzing too, right?"
Ritsu looked up at him as if he'd spoken a language that didn't exist. "... what?" Shou rolled around his bed like an alligator until the blankets had his arms pinned to his sides.
"When we touch? It's like. Chhrrrrrzing! Y'know?"
Ritsu stared at him for another moment, his eyes hard and making Shou overheat in his fabric cocoon. "... that's the electricity from you rubbing your feet on the rug all the time."
Shou laughed and called him an idiot.)
Ritsu is exciting. He’s normal and boring and just some kid hiding cactus spines under his skin and Shou thinks he’s exciting. He always does his homework and hands it in before it’s due and he never misses a day of school and even though he hates Reigen he helps at Spirits and Such when everyone else is too busy. He has that respectful and diligent tone of voice and manner of speech down to a perfect tune. Ritsu is the perfect student and perfect son and Shou is the only one who sees him bare his teeth. The more Shou hung around the more he heard Ritsu’s subconscious, the more Ritsu would lean towards him and whisper what he wanted to say but was too polite to. Ritsu had two faces and Shou was enamored with the one only he saw.
He wanted to see Ritsu when everyone else saw him, too. Just as everyone else saw him; not hovering outside his classroom window or dive bombing on him when he walked home from school. But then he thought, if Ritsu could do it all, why couldn’t he?
It wasn’t like in the movies or TV shows. Shou had never lived with a schedule, deadlines and bells and the actual need to know what day of the week it was. He still tried to make it into something it wasn’t; Shou was a spy, an infiltrator, trying to accustom himself to the ways of normal middle school life. He only spoke to Ritsu like he was an acquaintance and pretended he didn’t know Ritsu hated the sugar on sour gummies or how he always slept with his back against his wall. Because he had no reason to know this stranger and he had to keep up the act if he wanted to complete his mission.
But it was two days in when the teacher asked them all to hand in some assignment Shou never knew existed when he clued in to this whole ‘school’ thing. The teacher didn’t like that he couldn’t take notes without drawing small sketches all around it. He didn’t know what was going on any time he was asked a question, regardless of how much he tried to listen to the lectures. English was the only thing he excelled in, and even then the teacher and some other students questioned the weird terms and words he used. He would jump and flinch at the bell, or if someone used his family name, and constantly lost track of what everything meant.
The class and the learning part of school was nothing, absolutely nothing like what Shou ever known. He’d never been in a class before; he’d had well known teachers and professors and lecturers teach him individually up until his powers showed themself and his father instead became more interested in focusing on making him the perfect esper.
But the social aspect of it? Shou excelled.
He had known that the mysterious American kid would get everyone’s attention, and he was more than right. Students kept talking to him, whispering in the middle of lectures, asking so many questions; are you actually American? Where did you live? What’s American school like? Do you dye your hair that colour? Do you know any English swear words? Have you ever shot a gun before? Why did you move here?
The questions were stupid and useless. One kid asked if he was secretly a celebrity and Shou wanted to bite him. But he never really denied anything; sometimes, he’d weave some intricate, bullshit story and feed them all lies. But rumours spread of him being some delinquent infamous celebrity who’d ducked out of America because he’d ruined his reputation there.
“The student council wants me to keep an eye on you,” Ritsu said to him, only having been enrolled for three days. Shou had been chugging back a thermos of hot coffee, inhaling it and choking at Ritsu’s words. Ritsu ran up beside him and pounded on his back until Shou’s coughs turned to laughter.
“O-oh my god,” he wheezed, smiling so wide it hurt, “are you serious? Already?” They were after school, Shou having waited for Ritsu to get done with his student council meeting. He likes to walk home with him, just like they do on TV, even though Shou had no reason to.
Ritsu nodded his head, stopping at the crosswalk and throwing his arm in front of Shou when he didn’t notice the traffic lights changing. “Yeah. The vice president kinda mentioned it your first day, actually. But now with all those rumours” -- he glared at Shou very briefly-- “that have been going around, the president specifically asked me to make sure you don’t mess around too much.”
The light changed, Ritsu pulled at the bend of Shou’s arm to get him walking. Shou stared up at the sparrows diving and twirling dozens of feet overhead, dependent on the steady feeling of Ritsu’s hand to keep him from walking off the crosswalk. Ritsu stuttered in his steps, barely pausing. “Wait, what do you mean already? ”
“Do you even need to ask that?”
Ritsu stared at him, then his shoulders deflated as he sighed. “No, I guess not.”
Shou goes to school early, sometimes. Way early, when the sun hasn’t fully dissolved into the sky yet and the dark is still clinging cold in the air, making his breath crispy. Usually on days when he’s feeling some weird mixture of anxious and calm, like something familiar is vibrating under his skin.
He’s four days into his first week and the unnatural clingy warmth of his own aura meshes with the chill in the air in a way that makes him want to launch himself into the air and across the world. But instead he slips into the school before anyone else, only the front door open for the janitors and other staff who want to prepare for the onslaught of children. There’s no other students in sight, the lockers at the ground floor all closed tight and undisturbed before Shou walks in.
He doesn’t really get the whole concept of the shoe lockers and things, really. He got scolded by Ritsu the first day when he’d just walked around in socks, then he’d given Shou a spare pair of his own inside shoes to wear as if Shou couldn’t buy every single sneaker in Japan. The shoes were still kept in the locker and used, though, progressively getting buried under the junk Shou started shoving into his locker.
Shou yawned way too loud to fill the silence, using telekinesis to shift the tumblers in his locker’s lock into place and yanking it open from across the room. One of the stray, now stale, powdered donuts he’d stolen from the staff room that first day tumbles out, glowing orange as it’s caught before it hits the floor.
Shou doesn’t notice the eyes staring at him from behind the second row of lockers as he pulls the donut across the room and into his mouth, frowning at the gross texture. He kicks off his sneakers up high and lets them float above him as he grabs Ritsu’s old shoes by hand, dropping them onto the floor with a loud FWAP.
There’s a low “eek!” from behind him at the noise that makes Shou tense up, energy pooling in his palms and oozing around his body as he makes himself vanish. Turning around, he sees a girl just barely peeking around the lockers, eyes wide and face pale and Shou’s first thought is that Ritsu isn’t going to like this.
He walks behind her before phasing back into existence, clearing his throat. She jumps and spins towards him, cowering like Shou’s a force to be reckoned with. (Which he is, of course.) He just stands there, all proper with his hands behind his back and a grin a little too wide in a way that doesn’t meet his eyes. She gulps.
“Hi,” Shou hums, “I didn’t see you there. Are you alright? You look a little pale. Need to sit down, rest a moment?” She blinks at him, shakes her head rapidly. Shou hums and steps back slightly. “Good! You look a little… unwell. You better take it easy for the rest of the day, huh? I mean, you look like you saw a ghost! And you wouldn’t want to freak out anyone else, right? Right?”
She opens her mouth, closes it again, eyes wide and glassy like a dead fish. She clicks her jaw shut, nodding rapidly. Shou smiles at her when he decides she got the message, turning away and going back to his locker, shucking on his shoes like nothing happened.
If he’d cared at all to remember or pay any real attention to anyone else in his school, he’d have recognized her right away. As it is, it takes the beginning of class for him to realize her desk is right to the left of his. Shou doesn’t acknowledge her existence at all; she stares at him nearly as intensely as Ritsu does for the rest of the day.
Gym class quickly became his favourite part of school.
It was only twice a week, (Tuesdays and Thursdays Ritsu told him) and Shou hadn’t been informed he would need another outfit for gym only so the gym teacher had just sighed and told him to remember for next time. Then they’d jumped right into dodgeball.
“Don’t you dare use your powers,” Ritsu whispered a little too quietly, walking a little too closely to Shou so that no one else could hear him, “If I see a single ball curve weirdly or get thrown too far or you dodge too well I will kill you. Shou, I swear to god I will skin you. No powers. Don’t even think about turning invisible.”
“Jeez, alright!” Shou groaned and threw up his arms, getting a few wayward looks from the other students. “Way to make the game boring, grandpa! Not that I need any pow-- anything else to kick your ass.” Ritsu’s jaw twitched as he glared, the both of them standing in line at the gym teacher’s whistle. “So that’s what you think, Shou? As if your noodle arms could even throw a ball.”
Shou dramatically gasped so loud it was nearly a yell, about to lay into Ritsu only to jump when the teacher yelled at him. He kept glaring at Ritsu’s smug look and stepping on his feet as the teams were dolled out.
They ended up on opposite teams, which ruined Shou’s plan to jump Ritsu when he wasn’t paying attention but ultimately ended up in their favour. It didn’t take long at all for things to kick off, the sound of people yelling and the thick shwack of students getting hit by gym balls filling the air. Ritsu easily fit into some leader type role, making sure everyone had a ball of their own, catching out of the air to defend others. Shou would’ve been a little awestruck if he wasn’t dead set on destroying Ritsu.
His own teammates steer clear of Shou, ducking out of his way and forfeiting dodgeballs if he so much as zeroes in on one. Ritsu’s jab was baseless, no need for psychic energy when he’s so intently, violently focused. Ritsu’s attention is undivided on Shou, too; he doesn’t throw towards anyone else, the balls he throws hitting so harsh against the gym walls they echo.
It’s when Ritsu ducks to pick up a dodgeball that he doesn’t manage to wiggle out of the way, Shou’s throw hitting him right in his left shoulder. It nearly knocks him onto the floor, and surely leaves a red mark on his arm that will last. It’s almost like the whole room stills a moment, everyone gasping and staring now that Shou is finally victorious in their exclusive game.
Shou laughs, yells, throwing his fists in the air. “Ah ha! Take that, pretty boy!” His cackle is downright maniacal, knocked out in a choked out cry as a dodgeball collides straight into his chest. It’s reflexive for him to pull up a skin-tight psychic barrier around him, second nature to use his powers that he doesn’t even think about. It’s so last minute though, that all it does is keep him from falling flat on his back.
“ Hey!” The gym teacher screams out, pointing straight at Ritsu. “You’re out, kid! That throw’s against the rules!” His reprimand doesn’t knock the blinding smile off of Ritsu’s face, doesn’t keep him from snorting and laughing at Shou’s expense. Shou plays it up, face wrinkled and a hand over his chest like he’s wounded, just to get another laugh out of him.
Shou instantly forgets the whole thing, the game and the rules and the team, going to stand beside Ritsu against the wall among the losers. Shou’s heart is running laps in his chest and Ritsu is still smiling.
“I told you not to use your powers,” Ritsu tries to admonish him, but the quiet tense tone falls flat around his grin. “Don’t think I didn’t see that. You want to blow your secret operation or something?”
Shou just scoffs. His stomach twists just a little as he remembers all of Salt Middle School. “You’re such a sore loser.”
Shou likes the rumours about himself. He likes hearing it, the whispering. It’s nearly been a week, and somehow the rumours and tall tales spread about him have lasted lifetimes. They start up in the morning, or early club hours, or through passing notes. And then they die by the time the final bell rings.
It’s easy to inspire some new weird gossip about himself. All it takes is a stray sentence, acting a little weird, maybe a nudge in the right direction. Shou feels like he’s controlling puppets, creating his own little stories and versions of himself in these strangers’ minds.
“I heard you’re an alien, now.”
The rooftop is the easiest place for them to vanish to during lunch. It’s almost a tradition, how regardless of where they end up during class that after the lunch bell they both find themselves up here. Shou likes it, likes that he can just indulge in the heat of his own aura and his power, entangling it around himself and the world. On the rooftop he is hot air and heat and warmth that's on the edge of dangerous, and it’s the closest he has to normal. Floating around in the air with his knees crossed, just barely keeping down the urge to float up into the clouds.
“Oh, am I now?”
Ritsu looks at him, eyes narrowed, accusing. He never used his powers blatantly, his energy curled up into his skin like a hermit crab. But Shou could still feel it, tendrils of cold ice that soothed as much as it froze. He was attuned to it at this point. Shou swirled in the air, as if putting his back to Ritsu and breaking his stare could distance him from his aura. “Hey, if people want to talk about me being an alien then who am I to stop them?”
“You at least should not be the ones starting these rumors, Shou.” Ritsu scoffs around the food in his mouth, yet Shou feels the cold presence of him entangle around his own existence like he was reaching for him. “C’mon, dude. I heard Masaki-san saying you were muttering about how much human food sucks and that you wish you were still on Mars.” Shou didn’t even bother trying to search his mind for who Masaki-san was; he knew it wouldn’t be there.
He snorts, grinning up into the sun. Whenever he floated just a bit too far from Ritsu, Shou would feel a chilled, cool tendril of his power reach out to him, like he was trying to ground him. Shou knew it was subconscious, he knew that Ritsu would never be so blatant. He liked to drift away sometimes just to feel Ritsu’s energy, imagining himself as a balloon and Ritsu is so desperately trying to keep him from floating away.
“You shouldn’t start rumours,” Ritsu repeats when Shou stays silent and stuck in his own head, tone more stern this time. “You were saying this was like… you’re infiltrating, right? Like a spy? I don’t think making up stories about yourself is all that subtle.”
“That’s where you're wrong, though.” He twisted around in the air, feet just barely touching the ground as he stood in front of Ritsu. “If there’s a million different far-fetched stories about me, then no way in hell people would believe the truth!” (Of course, neither of them can really decide on what the ‘truth’ was.) “Besides, it’s awesome! I can be whatever I want! It’s like shapeshifting.” Shou paused, tapping his chin as his thoughts trailed off. “Hey, do you think espers could shapeshift? Man, why haven’t I tried that before.”
Ritsu doesn’t even bother responding to that last part. “Okay, sure, it’s kinda cool. You’re messing up the whole school though.” He paused for a moment, Shou picking at some lint in his pocket absentmindedly as he waited for more of Ritsu’s nagging. “You should pay more attention in class, too. Your grades are going to be horrible.”
Shou groaned loud, too loud, making Ritsu frown at him as he threw his arms into the air. “God, Riichan! You’re such a buzzkill!” Ritsu’s frown deepened. “Y’know, I thought you’d be more fun in this whole school thing. Like, I thought we’d be two criminals in cahoots, skipping class and messing around in the office after hours and flipping all the desks in every classroom over! But nope! You’re a teacher’s pet.”
Ritsu’s eyebrow twitched, his mouth a thin line, curled down at the corners. Shou did his best not to grin, not to rejoice at the fact he clearly got Ritsu wrapped around his finger.
He went to say something, only for the bell to interrupt him. Ritsu moved to stand up and head back to class almost instinctively as if obedience and the class schedule was embedded in his DNA. But he paused this time. Shou didn’t look fully at him, pretending to still pout. But he could feel the energy rippling under Ritsu’s skin, like unsteady and anxious waters.
“... I’m not a teacher’s pet,” Ritsu said. Shou couldn’t help himself then; he turned to Ritsu, grabbed his wrist and pulled him into the air and off the school's roof. His laughter was louder than Ritsu’s protests as Shou flung him through the air.
They ditched school the rest of the day, Shou dragging him around for the most part. They took off out of town to forested hills for a bit; Shou took him to some practically empty arcade, only to get yelled at by Ritsu when he noticed he was telekinetically pulling tickets from the machines; the returned to the school as the sun set, broke into the gym and threw dodgeballs at each other until Shou took one to the face and got a bloody nose, making Ritsu panic and try and rush him to the hospital.
They broke into their classroom last, the sky darkening from pale blues to pink-purples and the burnt orange reflection of the setting sun. Shou drew on the whiteboard, some shaky drawing of Shou getting abducted by a UFO with a crowd looking up at him in horror. He was drawing a miniature Ritsu, who was crying his eyes out, when he cleared his throat.
“I lied, by the way.”
Ritsu had shoved some desks together, now laying atop of them and reading some book he’d taken from his own desk. He looked up towards Shou, his back still to him. “Huh?”
“You’re not a buzzkill,” Shou hummed, his tongue sticking out; he needed to get Ritsu’s spiky hair perfect. “I just wanted you to skip with me.”
Ritsu didn’t say anything for a minute, but Shou could still feel eyes on his back. His energy was cooler, now. Liquid, pooling down around him and under the desks and around Shou’s feet. He kept pulling him, tugging at the edges of Shou’s being. Ritsu wasn’t aware of these incorporeal things, couldn’t control or feel the ways psychic energy simply existed. He couldn’t feel it like Shou did. Maybe no one could.
Ritsu’s aura warmed in the places where it got too close to Shou. He felt it ripple as Ritsu sighed and puffed his chest. Shou tried to draw Ritsu’s face as sad but accidentally smudged it. He wiped it off and started over.
“I knew that,” Ritsu lied.
The weekend came. Shou said goodbye to Ritsu and vanished around a corner just so he could go invisible and jump from rooftop to rooftop, following him for at least one more street. When he saw his house in the distance something unnamed in his chest uncoiled and he left.
Shou went home. He walked through the front door for the first time in… a while. He wasn’t sure how long. But he heard his mother jump at the sound of it, saw her run into the hall and tilt her head to the front door as he took his shoes off.
“Shou-kun!” She practically shouted, genuinely sounding delighted. There were the subtlest lines of crow’s feet in the corners of her eyes as she smiled wide at him. “How are you? I haven’t seen you in a while! Oh, so busy with school and all! How was your day?”
Shou hummed, “It’s alright. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing most of the time.” He walked past her as she retreated back into the kitchen, Shou throwing his backpack into his room without much thought.
“You’re supposed to be learning and listening and taking notes,” his mom said loudly, tone more teasing than anything. “You do take notes, right?” Shou gulped and stayed silent, getting a laugh a second later.
His mother’s house was small, one floor and compact. Shou sometimes felt like he could put his hands up and touch either side of the building if he stretched a bit. Before he’d moved in properly, his bedroom was a tiny office with a cot he would sleep on whenever he’d show up at his mom’s doorstep. Now it was his room, officially. It felt the same as before. He’d mastered how to crack open the window without it squealing like it was an art form.
“I still don’t get why you chose to go to that school in the next town over,” his mother said, only partially directed at Shou anymore. He heard the sound of the fridge opening, that one creaky spot on the kitchen floor groaning under her steps. “I mean, there’s some very nice middle schools all around here! It’s not a long trip at least, only half an hour or so, but still! I can’t imagine getting up that early every day. No wonder you have bags under your eyes! Make sure to sleep in nice and long this weekend, okay?”
“I will!” Shou yelled back, when the silence indicated she was hoping for a response. His bedroom was full of knick-knacks already: rocks he’d find when fishing or messing around in the forest with Ritsu; arcade tickets and the shitty plastic toys Ritsu had refused to take; small sketches and his schoolwork taped up on his walls, beside coupons and receipts from stores Ritsu took him to when they just wanted to browse and get lost in the mall; a poster he stole straight off the wall of Spirits and Such that he’d grabbed right in front of Reigen in an attempt to make Ritsu laugh; there’s dozens of pages of paper all over the desk, covered in math and history notes and all the things Shou is supposed to have learned, desperately written in his messy writing.
Shou feels restless already, his fingers itch. He wants to put his fist through a wall. He wants to open the window and let himself float up and up and up into the air until he’s dissolved into the ozone. He wonders what Ritsu is doing. He wants to go to the school and rip up all his information and make it seem like he never existed (again). He considers taking his hamsters out of their cage and letting them crawl over him so he can feel like nothing. Instead, he just lays in his bed and stares at the wall and sighs.
Earlier today, he tried telling a new rumor, another of his stupid false stories; he was just a normal kid from America. His parents divorced, he lived with his dad until recently. American schools sucked, and his father tried to homeschool him when they moved a lot for business reasons, but he was horrible at it. He has a lot of scars on his hands and across his knuckles because he was always clumsy. His mom always coddles him and is annoying and babies him. He has dreams of falling a lot. His dad still lives across seas but calls him sometimes.
No one seemed to like those lies as much, not after Shou was an alien pretending to be a human, or a cyborg created to destroy the world, or a spy or a wizard or whatever else. Ritsu had stared at him a little too long and a little differently during class.
“Shou-kun?” His mom yelled, not quite waiting for a response, “are you staying for dinner?” She didn’t quite know how much to make for two people, always making too much or too little. Shou didn’t help, constantly away from home or staying in his room or taking off right before dinner is ready. At first, whenever Shou would just crawl in through his bedroom window at whatever time of day or night, his mom would knock on the door, maybe open it, let him know she saved a plate for him. She stopped doing that after a few dozen times, but would always save some for him.
“I will!” He yelled out, taking just another moment to sink into his bed before forcing himself up to his feet again. He steeled his thoughts and that desire to run and pushed it into the dusty corners of his head. He sat at his desk, pulled open his math textbook and shoved all the paper around and just tried to pretend for a little while. He wondered how Ritsu could even handle this.